OT: Contact With Mars Rover "Spirit" Interrupted - "Very Serious Anomaly"

Let's hope...durn it...

Maybe it's just decided to start screening its calls...

tah

I agree. The folks at JPL are geniuses, and I hope they figure this one out and fix it.

But not all failure modes are bad.

Top 10 Good Reasons For Spirit's Problems

1. Probe sacrificed itself to end Jerry/TRA/NAR war.
2. NASA is embarrassed: Adirondack is meteorite from Earth.
3. You simply don't leave an expensive vehicle like that unlocked in that kind of neighborhood.
4. Spirit fell asleep listening to State of the Union address. Wait a couple days and it will wake up.
5. NASA is covering up most recent transmission from Spirit: "I'm sorry Dave, but I can't do that."
6. Martians mistook Spirit for entry in "Robot Wars" TV show.
7. Spirit is installing new Microsoft Windows XP upgrade; once installation is finished and the system rebooted, everything will be fine.
8. Note for next probe: Do not make rover out of things edible by silicon and metal-based life.
9. Liquid water does bad things to electronic equipment.
10. Drilling woke up Adirondack and the creature ("What do you mean you think I'm a rock?") retaliated.

Zooty

Anyone remember a story about Martian children climbing all over a NASA probe? I think it was by Niven and one of the kid's names was "Ditdu" or "Ditdoo."

Windows Blue Screen Of Death.

Fred Shecter wrote: > Windows Blue Screen Of Death.

From

River Systems Inc. made the operating system, VxWorks OS, that runs on the radiation-hardened 20-MHz Rad 6000 CPU module aboard the NASA rovers. Mike Deliman, a technical staff member at the Alameda, Calif., company, has served the Mars rover project as chief engineer for the OS.

Spirit?s onboard computer has only 128M of memory, so ?there?s not a whole lot of instructions we can give it,? Deliman said.

Hard to fit much in 128M isn't it...

Nobody needs more than 16k of ram (or whatever the quote says).

Not at all- 128 M is a HUGE HUGE amount of RAM for a spacecraft. In fact, I am sure a lot of that (the vast majority, in fact) is data storage instead of instructions and working variables. We managed one of the more complex space comptuer jobs with 2 computers with 384 and

512 *K* of memory, and the first computer-controlled spacecraft I worked had 1024 WORDS of volatile memory, and 8192 WORDS of ROM. Managed to put a lot of functions in there - even a crude orbit ephemeris propagation.

One you get out of the GUI/Interactive world, and into the embedded processor/ assembly code world, the obscene "bloat" of features is not needed.

Actually, I am working this instant (well, as soon as stop typing into USENET) on a system that uses the same processor and VXWorks. We don't have anything like 128M - and I have no idea what we could even think up to put in that much memory.

Brett

I'm going to go back and look at the images of Spirit very closely. Considering the problems that have come up, I bet I will be able to find a "Powered by Microsoft" and an "Intel Cintrino Inside" sticker on it somewhere. ;)

WinXP can't even pass gas with less ram than that, but a good OS can do a whole lot of stuff with a lot less than 128mb or ram.

I'll add a couple more.

;)

;)

I believe it was 640K, if you're referring to Bill Gates.

-Kevin

It's trying to sort through 330+ "generic viagra" e-mails per day.

Spirit; "enlarge my what?!?"

-- Eric Benner TRA # 8975 L2 NAR # 79398

They first started having anamolous communication with Spirit yesterday, during a high-gain transmission to earth (Canberra), but because of weather problems, they are unsure if the communications problems were with Spirit or the weather. Yesterday and today (both) they received a 'commanded beep' signal from the rover, which indicates that it is alive, and processing the command, but it is also in 'safe' mode due to an unknown fault.

At the time of the problem, the only mechanical activity that was occurring was the movement of the high-gain antenna (in other words, the rover was not in motion). As an additional item (I'm adding this as editorial comment, not something that JPL thinks is related), high-current spikes were seen in the high gain antenna after first deployment on the surface, but it was unable to be repeated during diagnostic tests.

The rover will have an additional team on it at present, which will create some minor human resource difficulties, because it was going to be 'powered down' during the landing and egress phases of Opportunity's arrival.

At the present time, Spirit remains in the 'safe' mode, and will remain in that mode until commanded to do otherwise. Because the 'anomaly team' does not know what the problem is, it will be done on a step-by-step basis, and they will not even tell the rover to resume communication until they get a better handle on the problem.

The problems are being 'simulated' on test beds at JPL, in order to try and duplicate the possible problem that the rover might be having. One question that I asked (and was rather shocked at the answer) was whether or not the test units are being used in the same temperature/pressure regimes that the Spirit rover is at, and it turns out that the test beds are being run at room temperature, room pressure.

While this is a serious problem, I don't have any sense that this is unresolvable, rather, it will take some careful, dedicated sleuthing to find out what may be going on, and to find ways to work around it. The fact that it responded to the command to 'beep' is seen as EXTREMELY positive, as it means that the command mechanism is still functioning, as well as the low-gain antenna, etc.

If you guys have any further questions, ask, and if the question was related during the teleconference, I'll try and answer from memory.

David Erbas-White

ghostinthemachine? ghosts of mars? I think a mars "bug" bit the spirit....... also its my understanding the program applications are java based....

opportunity is due Saturday..........

shockie B)

Ohhhhhh. I get it. You've got connections at JPL. Perhaps..... you even know the frequencies they're using and ... Out with it! What have you done to Spirit, MISTER Erbas-White? If that's you're real name.

Randy

Depends what you install, I have an XPe install running in 16Mb of RAM, not that it is recognisable as XP. Runs our comms software fine though.

Stephen.

All GUIs are pigs.Strip out all the fluff and run lean and mean.

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

1. somebody deleted (accidentally or intentinally) all the prepared files. all three years of art work went clusters ashses.

-1. if not deleted... FILENAPPED, to be released when ramsom is made.

Now Randy, let the ANOPs alone. You know they are so important they can't have their real name out there; credibility and profession reprisal issues, don't you know...(;-)

Fred